PREMIERE: Blake Hazard Tantalizes “Before the Ice”

Plus Xander Singh lends a hand.

Blake Hazard made her name with The Submarines, which she founded with her ex John Dragonetti after they each heard songs the other had written about their breakup. That’s a precipitous way to start a band, but it worked (doubly so: she and Dragonetti eventually married), and the pair made a handful of records before Hazard stepped out on her own with 2013’s The Eleanor Islands.

Now, having made her way around the album circuit, she’s back again with the single “Before the Ice,” a thick song about a thin line. “As I wrote this, I imagine a scene on a quiet starry beach at nice, the ice clinking around in moonlit glasses, making two people brave enough to feel something—or admit that they do—for each other,” Hazard says. “It’s a little encouragement to get together, too, to risk your heart a little, let the stars align.” Taking precisely that kind of risk has brought her this far, of course, and it brings “Before the Ice” through a few different phases, from French café folk to raunchy sax-soul to a kind of late-night smokiness that suggests that the lyric’s forecasted risk will indeed pay off.

Today, we’re premiering both “Before the Ice” and a remix of the track by Xander Singh—whose “ICU” video we introduced you to just last week. Check them both out below.